Chapter XIV: Appendix (7)

It was supposed for a time that there was a third survey carried on in India, ethnological and linguistic, and the volume, published by Colonel Dalton, “Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal,” with portraits from photographs, was a most excellent beginning. But the other India Governments have not hitherto followed the example of the Bengal Government, and nothing has of late come to my knowledge in this important line of research. Would not Dr. Hunter, who has done so much for a scientific study of the non-Aryan languages and races of India, take up this important branch of research, and give us, not only photographs and graphic description, but also, what is most wanted, scholarlike grammars of the principal races of India? Lists of words, if carefully chosen, like those in Colonel Dalton’s work and in Sir George Campbell’s “Specimens,” are, no doubt, most valuable for preliminary researches, but without grammars, none of the great questions which are still pending in Indian Ethnology will ever be satisfactorily and definitely settled. No real advance has been made in the classification of Indian dialects since the time when I endeavored, some twenty years ago, to sum up what was then known on that subject, in my letter to Bunsen “On the Turanian Languages.” What I then for the first time ventured to maintain against the highest authorities in Indian linguistic ethnology, viz., that the dialects of the Mundas or the Koles constituted a third and totally independent class of languages in India, related neither to the Aryan nor to the Dravidian families, has since been fully confirmed by later researches, and is now, I believe, generally accepted. The fact also, on which I then strongly insisted, that the Uraon Koles, and Rajmahal Koles, might be Koles in blood, but certainly not in language, their language being, like that of the Gonds, Dravidian, is now no longer disputed. But beyond this, all is still as hypothetical as it was twenty years ago, simply because we can get no grammars of the Munda dialects. Why do not the German missionaries at Ranchi, who have done such excellent work among the Koles, publish a grammatical analysis of that interesting cluster of dialects? Only a week ago, one of them, Mr. Jellinghaus, gave me a grammatical sketch of the Mundári language, and even this, short as it is, was quite sufficient to show that the supposed relationship between the Munda dialects and the Khasia language, of which we have a grammar, is untenable. The similarities pointed out by Mason between the Munda dialects and the Talaing of Pegu, are certainly startling, but equally startling are the divergences; and here again no real result will be obtained without a comparison of the grammatical structure of the two languages. The other classes of Indian languages, the Taic, the Gangetic, subdivided into Trans-Himalayan and Sub-Himalayan, the Lohitic, and Tamulic, are still retained, though some of their names have been changed. Without wishing to defend the names which I had chosen for these classes, I must say that I look upon the constant introduction of new technical terms as an unmixed evil. Every classificatory term is imperfect. Aryan, Semitic, Hamitic, Turanian, all are imperfect, but, if they are but rightly defined, they can do no harm, whereas a new term, however superior at first sight, always makes confusion worse confounded. The chemists do not hesitate to call sugar an acid rather than part with an old established term; why should not we in the science of language follow their good example?

Dr. Leitner’s labors in Dardistan should here be mentioned. They date from the year 1866. Considering the shortness of the time allotted to him for exploring that country, he has been most successful in collecting his linguistic materials. We owe him a vocabulary of two Shinâ dialects (the Ghilghiti and Astori), and of the Arnyia, the Khayuna, and the Kalâsha-Mânder. These vocabularies are so arranged as to give us a fair idea of the systems of conjugation and declension. Other vocabularies, arranged according to subjects, allow us an insight into the intellectual life of the Shinas, and we also receive most interesting information on the customs, legends, superstitions, and religion of the Dardus. Some of the important results, obtained by the same enterprising scholar in his excavations on the Takht-i-bahai hills will be laid before the Archæological Section of this Congress. It is impossible to look at the Buddhist sculptures which he has brought home without perceiving that there is in them a foreign element. They are Buddhist sculptures, but they differ both in treatment and expression from what was hitherto known of Buddhist art in various parts of the world. Dr. Leitner thinks that the foreign element came from Greece, from Greek or Macedonian workmen, the descendants of Alexander’s companions; others think that local and individual influences are sufficient to account for apparent deviations from the common Buddhist type. On this point I feel totally incompetent to express an opinion, but whatever the judgment of our archæological colleagues may be, neither they nor we ourselves can have any doubt that Dr. Leitner deserves our sincere gratitude as an indefatigable explorer and successful discoverer.

Many of the most valuable treasures of every kind and sort, collected during these official surveys, and by private enterprise, are now deposited in the Indian Museum in London, a real mine of literary and archæological wealth, opened with the greatest liberality to all who are willing to work in it.

It is unfortunate, no doubt, that this meeting of Oriental scholars should have taken place at a time when the treasures of the Indian Museum are still in their temporary exile; yet, if they share in the regret felt by every friend of India, at the delay in the building of a new museum, worthy both of England and of India, they will also carry away the conviction, that such delay is simply due to a desire to do the best that can be done, in order to carry out in the end something little short of that magnificent scheme of an Indian Institute, drawn by the experienced hand of Mr. Forbes Watson.

And now, in conclusion, I have to express my own gratitude for the liberality both of the Directors of the old East India Company and of the present Secretary of State for India in Council, for having enabled me to publish that work the last sheet of which I am able to present to this Meeting to-day, the “Rig-Veda, with the Commentary of Sâyaṇâcârya.” It is the oldest book of the Aryan world, but it is also one of the largest, and its publication would have been simply impossible without the enlightened liberality of the Indian Government. For twenty-five years I find, that taking the large and small editions of the Rig-Veda together, I have printed every year what would make a volume of about six hundred pages octavo. Such a publication would have ruined any bookseller, for it must be confessed, that there is little that is attractive in the Veda, nothing that could excite general interest. From an æsthetic point of view, no one would care for the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and I can well understand how, in the beginning of our century, even so discriminating a scholar as Colebrooke could express his opinion that, “The Vedas are too voluminous for a complete translation, and what they contain would hardly reward the labor of the reader, much less that of the translator. The ancient dialect in which they are composed, and specially that of the three first Vedas, is extremely difficult and obscure; and, though curious, as the parent of a more polished and refined language, its difficulties must long continue to prevent such an examination of the whole Vedas, as would be requisite for extracting all that is remarkable and important in those voluminous works. But they well deserve to be occasionally consulted by the Oriental scholar.” Nothing shows the change from the purely æsthetic to the purely scientific interest in the language and literature of India more clearly than the fact that for the last twenty-five years the work of nearly all Sanskrit scholars has been concentrated on the Veda. When some thirty years ago I received my first lessons in Sanskrit from Professor Brockhaus, whom I am happy and proud to see to-day among us, there were but few students who ventured to dive into the depths of Vedic literature. To-day among the Sanskrit scholars whom Germany has sent to us--Professors Stenzler, Spiegel, Weber, Hang, Pertsch, Windisch--there is not one who has not won his laurels on the field of Vedic scholarship. In France also a new school of Sanskrit students has sprung up who have done most excellent work for the interpretation of the Veda, and who bid fair to rival the glorious school of French Orientalists at the beginning of this century, both by their persevering industry and by that “sweetness and light” which seems to be the birthright of their nation. But, I say again, there is little that is beautiful, in our sense of the word, to be found in the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and what little there is, has been so often dwelt on, that quite an erroneous impression as to the real nature of Vedic poetry has been produced in the mind of the public. My old friend, the Dean of St. Paul’s, for instance, in some thoughtful lectures which he delivered this year on the “Sacred Poetry of Early Religions,” has instituted a comparison between the Psalms and the hymns of the Veda, and he arrives at the conclusion that the Psalms are superior to the Vedic hymns. No doubt they are, from the point of view which he has chosen, but the chief value of these hymns lies in the fact that they are so different from the Psalms, or, if you like, that they are so inferior to the Psalms. They are Aryan, the Psalms Semitic; they belong to a primitive and rude state of society, the Psalms, at least most of them, are contemporaneous with or even later than the heydays of the Jewish monarchy. This strange misconception of the true character of the Vedic hymns seemed to me to become so general, that when some years ago I had to publish the first volume of my translation, I intentionally selected a class of hymns which should in no way encourage such erroneous opinions. It was interesting to watch the disappointment. What, it was said, are these strange, savage, grotesque invocations of the Storm-gods, the inspired strains of the ancient sages of India? Is this the wisdom of the East? Is this the primeval revelation? Even scholars of high reputation joined in the outcry, and my friends hinted to me that they would not have wasted their life on such a book.

Now, suppose a geologist had brought to light the bones of a fossil animal, dating from a period anterior to any in which traces of animal life had been discovered before, would any young lady venture to say by way of criticism, “Yes, these bones are very curious, but they are not pretty!” Or suppose a new Egyptian statue had been discovered, belonging to a dynasty hitherto unrepresented by any statues, would even a school-boy dare to say, “Yes, it is very nice, but the Venus of Milo is nicer?” Or suppose an old MS. is brought to Europe, do we find fault with it, because it is not neatly printed? If a chemist discovers a new element, is he pitied because it is not gold? If a botanist writes on germs, has he to defend himself, because he does not write on flowers? Why, it is simply because the Veda is so different from what it was expected to be, because it is not like the Psalms, not like Pindar, not like the Bhagavadgîtâ, it is because it stands alone by itself, and reveals to us the earliest germs of religious thought, such as they really were; it is because it places before us a language, more primitive than any we knew before; it is because its poetry is what you may call savage, uncouth, rude, horrible, it is for that very reason that it was worth while to dig and dig till the old buried city was recovered, showing us what man was, what we were, before we had reached the level of David, the level of Homer, the level of Zoroaster, showing us the very cradle of our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. _I_ am not disappointed with the Veda, and I shall conclude my address with the last verses of the last hymn, which you have now in your hands,--verses which thousands of years ago may have been addressed to a similar meeting of Aryan fellow-men, and which are not inappropriate to our own:--

Sám gacchadhvam sám vadadhvam sám vaḥ mánâṃsi jànatâm,
Devâh bhâgám yáthâ pû́rve[7] saṃjânânấḥ upấsate,
Samânáh mántraḥ sámitiḥ samánî́ samânám mánaḥ sahá cittám eshâm,
Samnám mántram abhí mantraye vaḥ samânéna vaḥ havíshâ juhomi.
Samânî́ vaḥ ấkûtiḥ samânấ hṛdayâni vaḥ,
Samânám astu vaḥ mánaḥ yáthâ vaḥ súsaha ásati.

“Come together! Speak together! Let your minds be concordant--the gods by being concordant receive their share, one after the other. Their word is the same, their counsel is the same, their mind is the same, their thoughts are at one; I address to you the same word, I worship you with the same sacrifice. Let your endeavor be the same! Let your hearts be the same! Let your mind be the same, that it may go well with you.”

NOTES.

NOTE A.

In the “Indian Mirror,” published at Calcutta, 20 September, 1874, a native writer gave utterance almost at the same time to the same feelings:--

“When the dominion passed from the Mogul to the hands of Englishmen, the latter regarded the natives as little better than niggers, having a civilization perhaps a shade better than that of the barbarians. . . . The gulf was wide between the conquerors and the conquered. . . . There was no affection to lessen the distance between the two races. . . . The discovery of Sanskrit entirely revolutionized the course of thought and speculations. It served as the ‘open sesame’ to many hidden treasures. It was then that the position of India in the scale of civilization was distinctly apprehended. It was then that our relations with the advanced nations of the world were fully realized. We were niggers at one time. We now become brethren. . . . The advent of the English found us a nation low sunk in the mire of superstitions, ignorance, and political servitude. The advent of scholars like Sir William Jones found us fully established in a rank above that of every nation as that from which modern civilization could be distinctly traced. It would be interesting to contemplate what would have been our position if the science of philology had not been discovered. . . . It was only when the labor of scholars brought to light the treasures of our antiquity that they perceived how near we were to their races in almost all things that they held dear in their life. It was then that our claims on their affection and regard were first established. As Hindus we ought never to forget the labor of scholars. We owe them our life as a nation, our freedom as a recognized society, and our position in the scale of races. It is the fashion with many to decry the labors of those men as dry, unprofitable, and dreamy. We should know that it is to the study of the roots and inflections of the Sanskrit language that we owe our national salvation. . . . Within a very few years after the discovery of Sanskrit, a revolution took place in the history of comparative science. Never were so many discoveries made at once, and from the speculations of learned scholars like ----, the dawnings of many truths are even now visible to the world. . . . Comparative mythology and comparative religion are new terms altogether in the world. . . . We say again that India has no reason to forget the services of scholars.”

NOTE B.

The following letter addressed by me to the “Academy,” October 17, 1874, p. 433, gives the reasons for this statement:--

“I was aware of the mission of the four young Brahmans sent to Benares in 1845, to copy out and study the four Vedas respectively. I had read of it last in the ‘Historical Sketch of the Brahmo Samaj,’ which Miss Collet had the kindness to send me. But what I said in my address before the Oriental Congress referred to earlier times. That mission in 1845 was, in fact, the last result of much previous discussion, which gradually weakened and destroyed in the mind of Ram Mohun Roy and his followers their traditional faith in the Divine origin of the Vedas. At first Ram Mohun Roy met the arguments of his English friends by simply saying, ‘If you claim a Divine origin for your sacred books, so do we;’ and when he was pressed by the argument derived from internal evidence, he appealed to a few hymns, such as the Gâyatrî, and to the Upanishads, as by no means inferior to passages in the Bible, and not unworthy of a divine author. The Veda with him was chiefly in the Upanishads, and he had hardly any knowledge of the hymns of the Rig-Veda. I state this on the authority of a conversation that passed between him and young Rosen, who was then working at the MSS. of the Rig-Veda-Sanhitâ in the British Museum, and to whom Ram Mohun Roy expressed his regret at not being able to read his own sacred books.

“There were other channels, too, through which, after Ram Mohun Roy’s death in 1833, a knowledge of the studies of European scholars may have reached the still hesitating reformers of the Brahma Sabhá. Dvarka Náth Tagore paid a visit to Europe in the year 1845. I write from memory. Though not a man of deep religious feelings, he was an enlightened and shrewd observer of all that passed before his eyes. He was not a Sanskrit scholar; and I well recollect, when we paid a visit together to Eugène Burnouf, Dvarka Náth Tagore putting his dark delicate hand on one side of Burnouf’s edition of the ‘Bhagavat Purâṇa,’ containing the French translation, and saying he could understand that, but not the Sanskrit original on the opposite page. I saw him frequently at Paris, where I was then engaged in collecting materials for a complete edition of the Vedas and the commentary of Sâyaṇâcârya. Many a morning did I pass in his rooms, smoking, accompanying him on the pianoforte, and discussing questions in which we took a common interest. I remember one morning, after he had been singing some Italian, French, and German music, I asked him to sing an Indian song. He declined at first, saying that he knew I should not like it; but at last he yielded, and sang, not one of the modern Persian songs, which commonly go by the name of Indian, but a genuine native piece of music. I listened quietly, but when it was over, I told him that it seemed strange to me, how one who could appreciate Italian and German music could find any pleasure in what sounded to me like mere noise, without melody, rhythm, or harmony. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that is exactly like you Europeans! When I first heard your Italian and German music I disliked it; it was no music to me at all. But I persevered, I became accustomed to it, I found out what was good in it, and now I am able to enjoy it. But you despise whatever is strange to you, whether in music, or philosophy, or religion; you will not listen and learn, and we shall understand you much sooner than you will understand us.’

“In our conversations on the Vedas he never, as far as I recollect, defended the divine origin of his own sacred writings in the abstract, but he displayed great casuistic cleverness in maintaining that every argument that had ever been adduced in support of a supernatural origin of the Bible could be used with equal force in favor of a divine authorship of the Veda. His own ideas of the Veda were chiefly derived from the Upanishads, and he frequently assured me that there was much more of Vedic literature in India than we imagined. This Dvarka Náth Tagore was the father of Debendra Náth Tagore, the true founder of the Brahmo Samáj, who, in 1845, sent the four young Brahmans to Benares to copy out and study the four Vedas. Though Dvarka Náth Tagore was so far orthodox that he maintained a number of Brahmans, yet it was he also who continued the grant for the support of the Church, founded at Calcutta by Ram Mohun Roy. One letter written by Dvarka Náth Tagore from Paris to Calcutta in 1845, would supply the missing link between what was passing at that time in a room of a hotel on the Place Vendôme, and the resolution taken at Calcutta to find out, once for all, what the Vedas really are.

“In India itself the idea of a critical and historical study of the Veda originated certainly with English scholars. Dr. Mill once showed me the first attempt at printing the sacred Gâyatrî in Calcutta; and, if I am not mistaken, he added that unfortunately the gentleman who had printed it died soon after, thus confirming the prophecies of the Brahmans that such a sacrilege would not remain unavenged by the gods. Dr. Mill, Stevenson, Wilson, and others were the first to show to the educated natives in India that the Upanishads belonged to a later age than the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and likewise the first to exhibit to Ram Mohun Roy and his friends the real character of these ancient hymns. On a mind like Ram Mohun Roy’s the effect was probably much more immediate than on his followers, so that it took several years before they decided on sending their commissioners to Benares to report on the Veda and its real character. Yet that mission was, I believe, the result of a slow process of attrition produced by the contact between native and European minds, and as such I wished to present it in my address at the Oriental Congress.”

[Footnote 1: These lists of common Aryan words were published in
the _Academy_, October 10, 1874, and are reprinted at the end of
the next article “On the Life of Colebrooke.”]

[Footnote 2: _Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und Orientalischen
Philologie in Deutschland_, von Theodor Benfey. München, 1869.]

[Footnote 3: _Aristoteles’ Metaphysik, eine Tochter der
Sânkhya-Lehre des Kapila_, von Dr. C. B. Schlüter. 1874.]

[Footnote 4: See Note A, p. 355.]

[Footnote 5: See Note B, p. 356.]

[Footnote 6: _Academy_, August 1, 1874.]

[Footnote 7: I read +yathâpûrve+ as one word.]

VIII.

LIFE OF COLEBROOKE.[1]

The name and fame of Henry Thomas Colebrooke are better known in India, France, Germany, Italy--nay, even in Russia--than in his own country. He was born in London on the 15th of June, 1765; he died in London on the 10th of March, 1837; and if now, after waiting for thirty-six years, his only surviving son, Sir Edward Colebrooke, has at last given us a more complete account of his father’s life, the impulse has come chiefly from Colebrooke’s admirers abroad, who wished to know what the man had been whose works they know so well. If Colebrooke had simply been a distinguished, even a highly distinguished, servant of the East India Company, we could well understand that, where the historian has so many eminent services to record, those of Henry Thomas Colebrooke should have been allowed to pass almost unnoticed. The history of British India has still to be written, and it will be no easy task to write it. Macaulay’s “Lives” of Clive and Warren Hastings are but two specimens to show how it ought to be, and yet how it cannot be, written. There is in the annals of the conquest and administrative tenure of India so much of the bold generalship of raw recruits, the statesmanship of common clerks, and the heroic devotion of mere adventurers, that even the largest canvas of the historian must dwarf the stature of heroes; and characters which, in the history of Greece or England, would stand out in bold relief, must vanish unnoticed in the crowd. The substance of the present memoir appeared in the “Journal” of the Royal Asiatic Society soon after Mr. Colebrooke’s death. It consisted originally of a brief notice of his public and literary career, interspersed with extracts from his letters to his family during the first twenty years of residence in India. Being asked a few years since to allow this notice to appear in a new edition of his “Miscellaneous Essays,” which Mr. Fitz-Edward Hall desired to republish, Sir Edward thought it incumbent on him to render it more worthy of his father’s reputation. The letters in the present volume are, for the most part, given in full; and some additional correspondence is included in it, besides a few papers of literary interest, and a journal kept by him during his residence at Nagpur, which was left incomplete. Two addresses delivered to the Royal Asiatic and Astronomical Societies, and the narrative of a journey to and from the capital of Berar, are given in an appendix and complete the volume, which is now on the eve of publication.

Although, as we shall see, the career of Mr. Colebrooke, as a servant of the East India Company, was highly distinguished, and in its vicissitudes, as here told by his son, both interesting and instructive, yet his most lasting fame will not be that of the able administrator, the learned lawyer, the thoughtful financier and politician, but that of the founder and father of true Sanskrit scholarship in Europe. In that character Colebrooke has secured his place in the history of the world, a place which neither envy nor ignorance can ever take from him. Had he lived in Germany, we should long ago have seen his statue in his native place, his name written in letters of gold on the walls of academies; we should have heard of Colebrooke jubilees and Colebrooke scholarships. In England, if any notice is taken of the discovery of Sanskrit--a discovery in many respects equally important, in some even more important, than the revival of Greek scholarship in the fifteenth century--we may possibly hear the popular name of Sir William Jones and his classical translation of Sakuntala; but of the infinitely more important achievements of Colebrooke, not one word. The fact is, the time has not yet come when the full importance of the Sanskrit philology can be appreciated by the public at large. It was the same with Greek philology. When Greek began to be studied by some of the leading spirits in Europe, the subject seemed at first one of purely literary curiosity. When its claims were pressed on the public, they were met by opposition, and even ridicule; and those who knew least of Greek were most eloquent in their denunciations. Even when its study had become more general, and been introduced at universities and schools, it remained in the eyes of many a mere accomplishment--its true value for higher than scholastic purposes being scarcely suspected. At present we know that the revival of Greek scholarship affected the deepest interests of humanity, that it was in reality a revival of that consciousness which links large portions of mankind together, connects the living with the dead, and thus secures to each generation the full intellectual inheritance of our race. Without that historical consciousness the life of man would be ephemeral and vain. The more we can see backward, and place ourselves in real sympathy with the past, the more truly do we make the life of former generations our own, and are able to fulfill our own appointed duty in carrying on the work which was begun centuries ago in Athens and at Rome. But while the unbroken traditions of the Roman world, and the revival of Greek culture among us, restored to us the intellectual patrimony of Greece and Rome only, and made the Teutonic race in a certain sense Greek and Roman, the discovery of Sanskrit will have a much larger influence. Like a new intellectual spring, it is meant to revive the broken fibres that once united the Southeastern with the Northwestern branches of the Aryan family; and thus to rëestablish the spiritual brotherhood, not only of the Teutonic, Greek, and Roman, but likewise of the Slavonic, Celtic, Indian, and Persian branches. It is to make the mind of man wider, his heart larger, his sympathies world-embracing; it is to make us truly _humaniores_, richer and prouder in the full perception of what humanity has been, and what it is meant to be. This is the real object of the more comprehensive studies of the nineteenth century, and though the full appreciation of this their true import may be reserved to the future, no one who follows the intellectual progress of mankind attentively can fail to see that, even now, the comparative study of languages, mythologies, and religions has widened our horizon; that much which was lost has been regained; and that a new world, if it has not yet been occupied, is certainly in sight. It is curious to observe that those to whom we chiefly owe the discovery of Sanskrit were as little conscious of the real importance of their discovery as Columbus was when he landed at St. Salvador. What Mr. Colebrooke did, was done from a sense of duty, rather than from literary curiosity; but there was also a tinge of enthusiasm in his character, like that which carries a traveller to the wastes of Africa or the icebound regions of the Pole. Whenever there was work ready for him, he was ready for the work. But he had no theories to substantiate, no preconceived objects to attain. Sobriety and thoroughness are the distinguishing features of all his works. There is in them no trace of haste or carelessness; but neither is there evidence of any extraordinary effort, or minute professional scholarship. In the same business-like spirit in which he collected the revenue of his province he collected his knowledge of Sanskrit literature; with the same judicial impartiality with which he delivered his judgments he delivered the results at which he had arrived after his extensive and careful reading; and with the same sense of confidence with which he quietly waited for the effects of his political and financial measures, in spite of the apathy or the opposition with which they met at first, he left his written works to the judgment of posterity, never wasting his time in the repeated assertion of his opinions, or in useless controversy, though he was by no means insensible to his own literary reputation. The biography of such a man deserves a careful study; and we think that Sir Edward Colebrooke has fulfilled more than a purely filial duty in giving to the world a full account of the private, public, and literary life of his great father.

Colebrooke was the son of a wealthy London banker, Sir George Colebrooke, a Member of Parliament, and a man in his time of some political importance. Having proved himself a successful advocate of the old privileges of the East India Company, he was invited to join the Court of Directors, and became in 1769 chairman of the Company. His chairmanship was distinguished in history by the appointment of Warren Hastings to the highest office in India, and there are in existence letters from that illustrious man to Sir George, written in the crisis of his Indian Administration, which show the intimate and confidential relations subsisting between them. But when, in later years, Sir George Colebrooke became involved in pecuniary difficulties, and Indian appointments were successively obtained for his two sons, James Edward and Henry Thomas, it does not appear that Warren Hastings took any active steps to advance them, beyond appointing the elder brother to an office of some importance on his secretariat. Henry, the younger brother, had been educated at home, and at the age of fifteen he had laid a solid foundation in Latin, Greek, French, and particularly in mathematics. As he never seems to have been urged on, he learned what he learned quietly and thoroughly, trying from the first to satisfy himself rather than others. Thus a love of knowledge for its own sake remained firmly engrained in his mind through life, and explains much of what would otherwise remain inexplicable in his literary career.

At the age of eighteen he started for India, and arrived at Madras in 1783, having narrowly escaped capture by French cruisers. The times were anxious times for India, and full of interest to an observer of political events. In his very first letter from India Colebrooke thus sketches the political situation:--

“The state of affairs in India seems to bear a far more favorable
aspect than for a long time past. The peace with the Mahrattas and
the death of Hyder Ally, the intended invasion of Tippoo’s country
by the Mahrattas, sufficiently removed all alarm from the country
powers; but there are likewise accounts arrived, and which seem to
be credited, of the defeat of Tippoo by Colonel Matthews, who
commands on the other coast.”

From Madras Colebrooke proceeded, in 1783, to Calcutta, where he met his elder brother, already established in the service. His own start in official life was delayed, and took place under circumstances by no means auspicious. The tone, both in political and private life, was at that time at its lowest ebb in India. Drinking, gambling, and extravagance of all kinds were tolerated even in the best society, and Colebrooke could not entirely escape the evil effects of the moral atmosphere in which he had to live. It is all the more remarkable that his taste for work never deserted him, and “that he would retire to his midnight Sanskrit studies unaffected by the excitement of the gambling-table.” It was not till 1786--a year after Warren Hastings had left India--that he received his first official appointment, as Assistant Collector of Revenue in Tirhut. His father seems to have advised him from the first to be assiduous in acquiring the vernacular languages, and we find him at an early period of his Indian career thus writing on this subject: “The one, and that the most necessary, Moors (now called Hindustani), by not being written, bars all close application; the other, Persian, is too dry to entice, and is so seldom of any use, that I seek its acquisition very leisurely.” He asked his father in turn to send him the Greek and Latin classics, evidently intending to carry on his old favorite studies, rather than begin a new career as an Oriental scholar. For a time he seemed, indeed, deeply disappointed with his life in India, and his prospects were anything but encouraging. But although he seriously thought of throwing up his position and returning to England, he was busy nevertheless in elaborating a scheme for the better regulation of the Indian service. His chief idea was, that the three functions of the civil service--the commercial, the revenue, and the diplomatic--should be separated; that each branch should be presided over by an independent board, and that those who had qualified themselves for one branch should not be transferred to another. Curiously enough, he lived to prove by his own example the applicability of the old system, being himself transferred from the revenue department to a judgeship, then employed on an important diplomatic mission, and lastly raised to a seat in Council, and acquitting himself well in each of these different employments. After a time his discontent seems to have vanished. He quietly settled down to his work in collecting the revenue of Tirhut; and his official duties soon became so absorbing, that he found little time for projecting reforms of the Indian Civil Service.

Soon also his Oriental studies gave him a new interest in the country and the people. The first allusions to Oriental literature occur in a letter dated Patna, December 10, 1786. It is addressed to his father, who had desired some information concerning the religion of the Hindus. Colebrooke’s own interest in Sanskrit literature was from the first scientific rather than literary. His love of mathematics and astronomy made him anxious to find out what the Brahmans had achieved in these branches of knowledge. It is surprising to see how correct is the first communication which he sends to his father on the four modes of reckoning time adopted by Hindu astronomers, and which he seems chiefly to have drawn from Persian sources. The passage (pp. 23-26) is too long to be given here, but we recommend it to the careful attention of Sanskrit scholars, who will find it more accurate than what has but lately been written on the same subject. Colebrooke treated, again, of the different measures of time in his essay “On Indian Weights and Measures,” published in the “Asiatic Researches,” 1798; and in stating the rule for finding the planets which preside over the day, called _Horâ_, he was the first to point out the coincidence between that expression and our name for the twenty-fourth part of the day. In one of the notes to his Dissertation on the Algebra of the Hindus he showed that this and other astrological terms were evidently borrowed by the Hindus from the Greeks, or other external sources; and in a manuscript note published for the first time by Sir E. Colebrooke, we find him following up the same subject, and calling attention to the fact that the word _Horâ_ occurs in the Sanskrit vocabulary--the _Medinî-Kosha_, and bears there, among other significations, that of the rising of a sign of the zodiac, or half a sign. This, as he remarks, is in diurnal motion one _hour_, thus confirming the connection between the Indian and European significations of the word.

While he thus felt attracted towards the study of Oriental literature by his own scientific interests, it seems that Sanskrit literature and poetry by themselves had no charms for him. On the contrary, he declares himself repelled by the false taste of Oriental writers; and he speaks very slightingly of “the _amateurs_ who do not seek the acquisition of useful knowledge, but would only wish to attract notice, without the labor of deserving it, which is readily accomplished by an ode from the Persian, an apologue from the Sanskrit, or a song from some unheard-of dialect of Hinduee, of which _amateur_ favors the public with a _free_ translation, without understanding the original, as you will immediately be convinced, if you peruse that repository of nonsense, the ‘Asiatic Miscellany.’” He makes one exception, however, in favor of Wilkins. “I have never yet seen any book,” he writes, “which can be depended on for information concerning the real opinions of the Hindus, except Wilkins’s ‘Bhagvat Geeta.’ That gentleman was Sanskrit mad, and has more materials and more general knowledge respecting the Hindus than any other foreigner ever acquired since the days of Pythagoras.” Arabic, too, did not then find much more favor in his eyes than Sanskrit. “Thus much,” he writes, “I am induced to believe, that the Arabic language is of more difficult acquisition than Latin, or even than Greek; and, although it may be concise and nervous, it will not reward the labor of the student, since, in the works of science, he can find nothing new, and, in those of literature, he could not avoid feeling his judgment offended by the false taste in which they are written, and his imagination being heated by the glow of their imagery. A few dry facts might, however, reward the literary drudge. . . . .”

It may be doubted, indeed, whether Colebrooke would ever have overcome these prejudices, had it not been for his father’s exhortations. In 1789, Colebrooke was transferred from Tirhut to Purneah; and such was his interest in his new and more responsible office, that, according to his own expression, he felt for it all the solicitude of a young author. Engrossed in his work, a ten years’ settlement of some of the districts of his new collectorship, he writes to his father in July, 1790:--

“The religion, manners, natural history, traditions, and arts of
this country may, certainly, furnish subjects on which my
communications might, perhaps, be not uninteresting; but to offer
anything deserving of attention would require a season of leisure to
collect and digest information. Engaged in public and busy scenes,
my mind is wholly engrossed by the cares and duties of my station;
in vain I seek, for relaxation’s sake, to direct my thoughts to
other subjects; matters of business constantly recur. It is for this
cause that I have occasionally apologized for a dearth of subjects,
having no occurrences to relate, and the matters which occupy my
attention being uninteresting as a subject of correspondence.”

When, after a time, the hope of distinguishing himself impelled Colebrooke to new exertions, and he determined to become an author, the subject which he chose was not antiquarian or philosophical, but purely practical.

“Translations,” he writes, in 1790, “are for those who rather need
to fill their purses than gratify their ambition. For original
compositions on Oriental history and sciences is required more
reading in the literature of the East than I possess, or am likely
to attain. My subject should be connected with those matters to
which my attention is professionally led. One subject is, I believe,
yet untouched--the agriculture of Bengal. On this I have been
curious of information; and, having obtained some, I am now pursuing
inquiries with some degree of regularity. I wish for your opinion,
whether it would be worth while to reduce into form the information
which may be obtained on a subject necessarily dry, and which
(curious, perhaps) is, certainly, useless to English readers.”

Among the subjects of which he wishes to treat in this work we find some of antiquarian interest, _e.g._, what castes of Hindus are altogether forbid cultivating, and what castes have religious prejudices against the culture of particular articles. Others are purely technical; for instance, the question of the succession and mixture of crops. He states that the Hindus have some traditional maxims on the succession of crops to which they rigidly adhere; and with regard to mixture, he observes that two, three, or even four different articles are sown in the same field, and gathered successively, as they ripen; that they are sometimes all sown on the same day, sometimes at different periods, etc.

His letters now became more and more interesting, and they generally contain some fragments which show us how the sphere of his inquiries became more and more extended. We find (p. 39) observations on the Psylli of Egypt and the snake-charmers of India, on the Sikhs (p. 45), on human sacrifices in India (p. 46). The spirit of inquiry which had been kindled by Sir W. Jones, more particularly since the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, had evidently reached Colebrooke. It is difficult to fix the exact date when he began the study of Sanskrit. He seems to have taken it up and left it again in despair several times. In 1793 he was removed from Purneah to Nattore. From that place he sent to his father the first volumes of the “Asiatic Researches,” published by the members of the Asiatic Society. He drew his father’s attention to some articles in them, which would seem to prove that the ancient Hindus possessed a knowledge of Egypt and of the Jews, but he adds: “No historical light can be expected from Sanskrit literature; but it may, nevertheless, be curious, if not useful, to publish such of their legends as seem to resemble others known to European mythology.” The first glimmering of comparative mythology in 1793!

Again he writes in 1793, “In my Sanskrit studies, I do not confine myself now to particular subjects, but skim the surface of all their sciences. I will subjoin, for your amusement, some remarks on subjects treated in the ‘Researches.’”

What the results of that skimming were, and how far more philosophical his appreciation of Hindu literature had then become, may be seen from the end of the same letter, written from Rajshahi, December, 6, 1793:--

“Upon the whole, whatever may be the true antiquity of this nation,
whether their mythology be a corruption of the pure deism we find in
their books, or their deism a refinement from gross idolatry;
whether their religious and moral precepts have been engrafted on
the elegant philosophy of the Nyâya and Mimânsâ, or this philosophy
been refined on the plainer text of the Veda; the Hindu is the most
ancient nation of which we have valuable remains, and has been
surpassed by none in refinement and civilization; though the utmost
pitch of refinement to which it ever arrived preceded, in time, the
dawn of civilization in any other nation of which we have even the
name in history. The further our literary inquiries are extended
here, the more vast and stupendous is the scene which opens to us;
at the same time, that the true and false, the sublime and the
puerile, wisdom and absurdity, are so intermixed, that, at every
step, we have to smile at folly, while we admire and acknowledge the
philosophical truth, though couched in obscure allegory and puerile
fable.”

In 1794, Colebrooke presented to the Asiatic Society his first paper, “On the Duties of a Faithful Hindu Widow,” and he told his father at the same time, that he meant to pursue his Sanskrit inquiries diligently, and in a spirit which seems to have guided all his work through life: “The only caution,” he says, “which occurs to me is, not to hazard in publication anything crude or imperfect, which would injure my reputation as a man of letters; to avoid this, the precaution may be taken of submitting my manuscripts to private perusal.”

Colebrooke might indeed from that time have become altogether devoted to the study of Sanskrit, had not his political feelings been strongly roused by the new Charter of the East India Company, which, instead of sanctioning reforms long demanded by political economists, confirmed nearly all the old privileges of their trade. Colebrooke was a free-trader by conviction, and because he had at heart the interests both of India and of England. It is quite gratifying to find a man, generally so cold and prudent as Colebrooke, warm with indignation at the folly and injustice of the policy carried out by England with regard to her Indian subjects. He knew very well that it was personally dangerous for a covenanted servant to discuss and attack the privileges of the Company, but he felt that he ought to think and act, not merely as the servant of a commercial company, but as the servant of the British Government. He wished, even at that early time, that India should become an integral portion of the British Empire, and cease to be, as soon as possible, a mere appendage, yielding a large commercial revenue. He was encouraged in these views by Mr. Anthony Lambert, and the two friends at last decided to embody their views in a work, which they privately printed, under the title of “Remarks on the Present State of the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal.” Colebrooke, as we know, had paid considerable attention to the subject of husbandry, and he now contributed much of the material which he had collected for a purely didactic work, to this controversial and political treatise. He is likewise responsible, and he never tried to shirk that responsibility, for most of the advanced financial theories which it contains. The volume was sent to England, and submitted to the Prime Minister of the day and several other persons of influence. It seems to have produced an impression in the quarters most concerned, but it was considered prudent to stop its further circulation on account of the dangerous free-trade principles, which it supported with powerful arguments. Colebrooke had left the discretion of publishing the work in England to his friends, and he cheerfully submitted to their decision. He himself, however, never ceased to advocate the most liberal financial opinions, and being considered by those in power in Leadenhall Street as a dangerous young man, his advancement in India became slower than it would otherwise have been.

A man of Colebrooke’s power, however, was too useful to the Indian Government to be passed over altogether, and though his career was neither rapid nor brilliant, it was nevertheless most successful. Just at the time when Sir W. Jones had died suddenly, Colebrooke was removed from the revenue to the judicial branch of the Indian service, and there was no man in India, except Colebrooke, who could carry on the work which Sir W. Jones had left unfinished, viz.: “The Digest of Hindu and Mohammedan Laws.” At the instance of Warren Hastings, a clause had been inserted in the Act of 1772, providing that “Maulavies and Pundits should attend the Courts, to expound the law and assist in passing the decrees.” In all suits regarding inheritance, marriage, caste, and religious usages and institutions, the ancient laws of the Hindus were to be followed, and for that purpose a body of laws from their own books had to be compiled. Under the direction of Warren Hastings, nine Brahmans had been commissioned to draw up a code, which appeared in 1776, under the title of “Code of Gentoo Laws.”[2] It had been originally compiled in Sanskrit, then translated into Persian, and from that into English. As that code, however, was very imperfect, Sir W. Jones had urged on the Government the necessity of a more complete and authentic compilation. Texts were to be collected, after the model of Justinian’s Pandects, from law-books of approved authority, and to be digested according to a scientific analysis, with references to original authors. The task of arranging the text-books and compiling the new code fell chiefly to a learned Pandit, Jagannâtha, and the task of translating it was now, after the death of Sir W. Jones, undertaken by Colebrooke. This task was no easy one, and could hardly be carried out without the help of really learned pandits. Fortunately Colebrooke was removed at the time when he undertook this work, to Mirzapur, close to Benares, the seat of Brahmanical learning, in the north of India, and the seat of a Hindu College. Here Colebrooke found not only rich collections of Sanskrit MSS, but likewise a number of law pandits, who could solve many of the difficulties which he had to encounter in the translation of Jagannâtha’s Digest. After two years of incessant labor, we find Colebrooke on January 3, 1797, announcing the completion of his task, which at once established his position as the best Sanskrit scholar of the day. Oriental studies were at that time in the ascendant in India. A dictionary was being compiled, and several grammars were in preparation. Types also had been cut, and for the first time Sanskrit texts issued from the press in Devanâgarî letters. Native scholars, too, began to feel a pride in the revival of their ancient literature. The Brahmans, as Colebrooke writes, were by no means averse to instruct strangers; they did not even conceal from him the most sacred texts of the Veda. Colebrooke’s “Essays on the Religious Ceremonies of the Hindus,” which appeared in the fifth volume of the “Asiatic Researches” in the same year as his translation of the “Digest,” show very clearly that he had found excellent instructors, and had been initiated in the most sacred literature of the Brahmans. An important paper on the Hindu schools of law seems to date from the same period, and shows a familiarity, not only with the legal authorities of India, but with the whole structure of the traditional and sacred literature of the Brahmans, which but few Sanskrit scholars could lay claim to even at the present day. In the fifth volume of the “Asiatic Researches” appeared also his essay “On Indian Weights and Measures,” and his “Enumeration of Indian Classes.” A short, but thoughtful memorandum on the origin of caste, written during that period, and printed for the first time in his “Life,” will be read with interest by all who are acquainted with the different views of living scholars on this important subject.